Any wars of the past were not complete without the capture of enemy contingents. Since wars are usually waged between countries inhabited by different peoples, the prisoners always have a clear ethnic identity. Usually prisoners are enemy soldiers captured in battle. This kind of deprivation of liberty usually does not contradict world concepts of warfare. However, a completely different matter is the imprisonment on the basis of ethnicity of the masses of the civilian population.
The history of the United States of America is usually counted from the day when the first English pilgrims fleeing religious persecution landed on the land they called New England and formed the colony of Plymouth. It happened in November 1620, when the ship of the "Pilgrim Fathers" called "Mayflower" docked at Plymouth Rock.
For the settlers, it was truly a heavenly place. However, they were not satisfied that the local population, the Pequot Indians, already lived on the land on which they found shelter. The Pequots were not at all happy about the appearance of uninvited guests, even if they were victims of religious oppression in their homeland. Numerous conflicts began.
Deeply religious, the founders of the Plymouth colony decided to exterminate the pesky natives. In 1635, the so-called. The "Pequot War" as a result of which almost all the Pequot Indians were exterminated. Before the outbreak of the war, more than 8,000 Indians lived in Plymouth in 21 villages. After the war, the main event of which was the so-called. "Massacre at the Mystic", the number of Indians fell by more than half. During the war, uninvited Anglo-Saxon immigrants actively practiced the burning of Indian settlements together with the inhabitants.
After the establishment of the new order, the first settlers lived quietly for 40 years. But in 1675, the Indians raised a revolt, led by "King Philip" - the leader of the wampang Metacomet, who was given such a nickname by the settlers because of the external resemblance to the Spanish king. The war was extremely bloody. On August 12, 1676, Matakomet was killed, his wife and children were sold into slavery, and his body was quartered and hung by his feet on a tree. The head of "King Philip" was impaled and put on a hill for the edification of the surviving natives. The results of the war were as follows: if 15 thousand Indians lived in the south of New England before the start of the war, then by the end of the war there were slightly more than 4 thousand. The losses of the British were more modest - 600 people were killed.
However, even the remaining Indians caused fear in the ancestors of future white Americans. Therefore, most of the Indians were forcibly taken to Deer Island in Boston Bay. On this island, most of the Indians, deprived of food and shelter, died. Deer Island can be considered the first concentration camp in modern history in which people were massacred along ethnic lines. In general, the new Americans liked the practice of gathering Indians in a limited area, and since that time the creation of the so-called. Indian reservations have become common practice.
America actually turned out to be the promised land and the white population began to rapidly increase in number. But population growth required new lands. Where to get them? There were several ways; one of them is to take away from the Indians.
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Beginning in the 1820s, the US government vigorously pursued a policy of expelling Indians from the fertile lands of the southern states. The Indians were asked to get out west of the Mississippi. The promises of "Indian resettlement" were the basis of the program of the 1828 presidential candidate, Andrew Jackson. Jackson relied on the support of the white population, who wanted to seize the lands of five tribes - Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Maskogue, Seminole. There was some snag, which was that these tribes were not bloodthirsty savages at all, but were already fully exposed to civilization; many adopted Christianity and, on the whole, successfully integrated into the new white model of civilization, which is why they received the general name "five civilized tribes".
However, in 1830, Andrew Jackson (already in office) signed the Indian Eviction Act. The law provided for a "voluntary" exchange of territories: five tribes left their lands and moved to the so-called. "Indian Territories" (the current states of Arkansas and Oklahoma).
The Choctaw tribe, although reluctantly, set off on a journey to the allotted land. But the Cherokee, who were most integrated into white culture, became obstinate. The Cherokee did not understand in any way why they should leave the lands of their ancestors and go to some kind of American Darktorakan. President Jackson in 1835 gave the Cherokee a stern reprimand, the gist of which was something like: “The circumstances are such that you cannot continue to remain in a civilized society. You have only one remedy - to go as far as possible to the West so that we don't get you."
The Cherokee Indians again missed the hint. Then next year, thousands of American soldiers surrounded Cherokee settlements and launched an operation. Initially, all Cherokee were herded into 31 wooden prison (or fort). If Deer Island in 1676 was not formally fenced off by anything (except for water), so the term concentration camp can only be applied to it conditionally, then 31 wooden prison for the Cherokee were classic concentration camps. Moreover, they were created long before the concentration camps that the British built during the Boer War of the early 20th century.
According to one Baptist missionary who witnessed the resettlement: "The soldiers broke into the Indian huts, not giving time to collect their things, giving only the opportunity to dress … like hungry wolves, looters plundered the property of the Indians." According to various reports, the Cherokee in prison were subjected to all kinds of abuse by the guards, including rape and torture. In the concentration camps, the Cherokee bravely continued to persist. But by 1838, food shortages and diseases mowing down people had taken their toll. The Cherokee surrendered and decided to "voluntarily" move to Oklahoma. 15 thousand people set off on a difficult journey. More than a third died on the way. The road along which the Cherokee moved was called the Trail of Tears.
By the 20th century, native populations no longer posed a threat to the free citizens of the United States. However, this does not mean that the Americans no longer need to fight against certain ethnic groups "posing a threat to national security." The US entry into World War I coincided with the invention of fingerprinting, and hundreds of thousands of German Americans were registered and recognized as "potentially hostile foreigners." At least 2,000 of them were detained and kept in internment camps throughout the war. The same fate befell the German-Americans during World War II, however, the Italian-Americans shared their fate. Moreover, US administration officials conducted an operation to secretly arrest and transport hundreds of Germans living in South America to the United States.
But much more severe repression has come down on Japanese Americans. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. Under this executive order, virtually all ethnic Japanese living in California were subject to internment. Unlike the Germans and Italians, who were arrested selectively, the Japanese were subject to continuous arrests, despite the fact that many Japanese had American citizenship.
The internment of the Japanese was accompanied by propaganda campaigns. This is what one newspaper of the time wrote: "Californians cannot feel safe until all hostile foreigners are gathered in one place under reliable protection …" More than 110 thousand Japanese (most of whom were US citizens) were sent to internment camps … Conditions in these camps were not very comfortable - special commissions often noted poor medical care. Only in January 1945, the internment order was canceled and thousands of Japanese, having received $ 25 in their hands and a train ticket to their home, left the camps. For another three years, they were monitored. Experts estimate that the total Japanese internees suffered damages of $ 164 million (under the heading "income") and another 206 million in real estate. In 1983, lawyers of the Supreme Court, as part of a special investigation, found out that the officials involved in the internment were well aware that most of the Japanese did not pose the slightest threat to US national security.
A short excursion into the history of concentration camp practice in the United States would be incomplete without mentioning the prison at Guantanamo. This prison is located in an indefinitely leased US government naval base in Cuba. Persons who are accused by the US authorities of waging a war on the side of the enemy are placed in prison. The prison began functioning in 2002, when 20 people from Afghanistan accused of participating in hostilities on the side of the Taliban were brought into it. In total, more than 700 people passed through this prison with similar charges. Since the legal status of prisoners at Guantanamo is not determined by the courts, anyone who is recognized by a special tribunal as militants fighting against the United States can remain in prison for life. Recently, the American media have often heard calls to close the prison in Guantanamo,especially after leaked reports of torture practiced there, but the US administration has no intention of eliminating this element of US national security.